Artstor-ITHAKA Community Letter

To our creators, partners, and users:

We are writing to you as a valued member of our community to share the good news that Artstor, the nonprofit provider of the Artstor Digital Library of images and the Shared Shelf platform for cataloguing and digital asset management, will now operate under the umbrella of its fellow nonprofit ITHAKA, the organization that currently operates three other services: JSTOR, Portico and Ithaka S+R. As you may know, Artstor, ITHAKA and JSTOR were all created as mission-driven nonprofit organizations with the initial support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and with similar aims. This strategic alignment is a natural fit for us all.

Artstor and JSTOR both work with libraries and museums, content partners and researchers to build and preserve shared academic resources. Now, with Artstor and JSTOR both under the umbrella of ITHAKA, a recognized leader in advancing technologies that strengthen the work of educational institutions while lowering their costs, the two will be better able to collaborate in developing new tools and sharing resources.

Where JSTOR has emphasized textual materials, Artstor has supported the visual. Where JSTOR has had its greatest impact as a resource for research, Artstor has served the field primarily as a teaching and learning resource. Together, we have wonderful opportunities for combining our capabilities and collections, so they can be discovered, contextualized, and advanced in ways that further empower researchers, teachers, and students.

Moreover, the relationships that are central to Artstor’s work as a trusted third party, bridging the interests of those who create images and those who use images, will remain intact in this new strategic alliance with ITHAKA, which shares Artstor’s focus and history of balancing the needs of various constituents.

In this time of great change for educational and cultural institutions, we have a duty to make the most of our resources, to benefit research and learning everywhere. The strategic alliance of Artstor with ITHAKA allows us to do just that, strengthening our organizations while benefiting the thousands of institutions we serve. We look forward to continuing to work with you as we have done to date—only better.

Portico

The Portico digital preservation service is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use
digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.